The present invention relates generally to a modified field layout for playing soccer (in U.S. parlance, otherwise “football”) and methods of playing soccer on the modified field layout. The present modified soccer field is approximately the same size as a conventional soccer field in length and width and the modified soccer game uses many of the same rules as conventional soccer.
Soccer is the world's most popular sport, with over twenty-eight billion total viewers to the FIFA World Cup event and over one billion viewers to the televised World Cup Final. Spectator interest in soccer outside the United States is also very high for regularly scheduled, weekly televised professional soccer matches. However, adult spectator interest in televised professional soccer, aside from the World Cup itself, remains very low on a national basis in the United States. This is not due to lack of exposure to conventional soccer, since childhood participation in soccer in the United States is among the most common organized sport activities. Victory by the United States women's team in the Olympics in 1996 and 2004, and the United States women's team FIFA World Cup victories in 1991 and 1999, also substantially established awareness and exposure to conventional soccer broadly throughout the United States. Despite these facts, conventional soccer continues to have a very low television audience and low attendance at professional soccer matches in the United States.
Baseball, American football, and basketball command United States television viewer national attention week after week. Soccer also has this potential, as evidenced by it being the most popular spectator sport in the world and the most popular childhood participation sport in the United States.